The Russian Federation’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has fundamentally altered post-Cold War security norms across the European continent. This includes a reinvigorated Transatlantic approach to supporting European energy security. For example, Western Europe had for years built up a strategic security vulnerability through an over-reliance on Russian hydrocarbon resources, in particular natural gas, as well as critical infrastructure owned by Kremlin-controlled enterprises. Europe is now embarking on a transformational shift to end its longstanding dependence on Russian hydrocarbons that provides an opportunity to both decouple from an authoritarian neighbor and decarbonize its energy supply to address the climate crisis. Meanwhile, policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic have aimed to deprive the Russian government of the financial and technical means of prosecuting its military aggression in Ukraine through comprehensive sanctions and technology export control regimes. This course will explore the history of European dependence on Russian energy resources and critical infrastructure projects and will analyze how the Russian Federation has ‘weaponized energy’ against European democracies before and after it’s invasion of Ukraine, including through trends of strategic corruption and elite capture. The course will assess as a case study the current European energy infrastructure landscape and ask students to propose infrastructure, regulatory, and physical/cyber security strategies from the perspective of a practitioner of transatlantic energy diplomacy. This course will also explore contemporary trends in energy sanctions and technology export controls policies crafted by democratic states worldwide. We will review recent U.S. and European sanctions policies through the framework of existing and proposed Russia sanctions, including analysis of sanctions implemented through Executive Order and Congressional legislation, and similar legislation enacted by the European Union. The course will take a multidisciplinary approach, combining primary source readings with classroom simulations drawing on the historical, policy, science, and technology drivers of effective European energy security strategies.
Course Inventory
Field Study of Soils
Processes of soil development in a variety of temperate environments. Effects of lithology and climate on soil properties. This is a field course with 5 required field days.
First Year Seminar: Climate Fiction
Whether you call it climatological science-fiction or #clifi, speculative fiction about anthropogenic climate change is becoming an important site for thinking, feeling, and warning about earth’s changing environments. In this class we’ll study a cluster of recent cli-fi novels that project a variety of climate scenarios into the future. We’ll also look at fictions that explore humanity’s entanglement with non-human beings and environments, as well as at those that connect climate change in the present with scarce-resources, conflict, displacement, and environmental racism. Supplementary readings in the environmental humanities will introduce terms and concepts such as the Anthropocene, deep time, the great acceleration, the nonhuman turn, ecological grief, and climate justice. Primary texts by the likes of Octavia Butler, A. S. Byatt, Barbara Kingsolver, Richard Powers, Kim Stanley Robinson, Jesmyn Ward, Alexis Wright.
Floodplain Management in a Changing Climate
According to a 2019 paper by Scott A. Kulp and Benjamin H. Strauss in the journal Nature Communications, 230 million people worldwide occupy land that is less than 1 meter above current high tide. These lands will be inundated by sea level rise by the end of this century, or earlier. Add to this the inherent flood risks in riverine and urban settings. How do we prepare and adapt? The class will explore the challenge of floodplain management in a changing climate through lectures, talks by guest experts, readings and multimedia, and exploration in the field. We will take a field trip to the New Jersey coast to witness home elevations, beach nourishment, and locales that are already experiencing chronic tidal flooding; we will meet with municipal officials challenged by increasingly persistent sea level rise. Our class will look at the National Flood Insurance Program, examine its goals, critique its 50 year history and debate reforms to the program at the same time the US Congress is considering reauthorization of the program. We will look at resiliency efforts that states and local governments are pursuing and the new city- and state-level position of Chief Resiliency Officer. In class we will cover hazard mitigation planning, land use, hard and natural infrastructure, regulations, the Community Rating System and other issues pertaining to flooding and climate change, including social justice and public health issues. Throughout the course, material will be introduced to prepare the student to take the Certified Floodplain Manager exam administered by the Association of State Floodplain Managers. This optional test, should the student pass, will provide credentialing that is well recognized in the United States.
Forest Worlds
The destruction of the world's forests through wild fires, deforestation, and global heating threatens planetary bio-diversity and may even, as a 2020 shows, trigger civilizational collapse. Can the humanities help us think differently about the forest? At the same time that forests of the world are in crisis, the "rights of nature" movement is making progress in forcing courts to acknowledge the legal "personhood" of forests and other ecosystems. The stories that humans have told and continue to tell about forests are a source for the imaginative and cultural content of that claim. At a time when humans seem unable to curb the destructive practices that place themselves, biodiversity, and forests at risk, the humanities give us access to a record of the complex inter-relationship between forests and humanity. Forest Worlds serves as an introduction to the environmental humanities. The environmental humanities offer a perspective on the climate emergency and the human dimension of climate change that are typically not part of the study of climate science or climate policy. Students receive instruction in the methods of the humanities - cultural analysis and interpretation of literature and film - in relation to texts that illuminate patterns of human behavior, thought, and affect with regard to living in and with nature.
Freshwater Ecology
Survey of the physical, chemical and biological properties of freshwater ecosystems, both riverine and lentic, natural and polluted.
Fundamentals of Bioclimatic Design
Directed student research of selected topics in environmental building design. These topics will be further explored in ARCH 7080: Bioclimatic Design Studio and will provide the basis for the research documents developed with each student's design project. Course work will include lectures, discussions, weekly readings, and in-class exercises. Each student will be required to make a presentation and submit a research report.
Fundamentals of Climate Action Planning for Cities
Many cities around the world, both large and small, have created climate action plans over the past few years. This course will outline aspects of the planning process including: decision factors for creating a plan, resourcing, outreach, communications, data and tracking, and execution. Students will leave the course with a clear understanding of how city level climate plans come together and are executed.
Geomicrobiology
Microorganisms inhabit almost every conceivable environment on the planet's surface, and extent the biosphere to depths of several kilometers into the crust. Significantly, the chemical reactivity and metabolic diversity displayed by microbial communities make them integral components of global elemental cycles, from mineral dissolution and precipitation reactions, to aqueous reduction-oxidation processes. In that regard, microorganisms have helped shape our planet overthe past 4 billion years and made it habitable for higher forms of life. In this course we will evaluate the geological consequences of microbial activities, by taking am interdisciplinary and "global" view of microbe-environment interactions.
Glaciers, Climate & Ice
All forms of frozen water at Earth's surface define the cryosphere. These icy environmnets are an integral part of the global climate system, with important linkages and feedbacks resulting from their influences on surface energy and moisture fluxes, clouds, precipitation, hydrology, and circulation in the atmosphere and oceans. This course will survey the various components of the cryosphere and their interactions with climate, with a strong emphasis on the dynamics of glaciers and ice sheets. Broad topics to be covered are 1)the rudimentary mechanics of glacier and ice sheet flow, 2)fast-flowing ice streams and factors limiting their motion, 3)ice-quakes and their origins, 4)the nature of climate data recorded in natural ice bodies, 5)the influence of climate on the stability of ice sheets and glaciers, and 6)glacier-like flow on other planetary bodies. This will be a lecture-based course with written assignmnets and problems sets.
Global Climate Change
Public perceptions and attitudes concerning the causes and importance of globalwarming have changed. Global Climate Change provides a sound theoretical understanding of global warming through an appreciation of the Earth's climate system and how and why this has changed through time. We will describe progress in understanding of the human and natural drivers of climate change, climate pr0cesses and attribution, and estimates of projected future climate change. We will assess scientific, tehnical, and socio-economic information relevant for the understanding of climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation.
Global Environmental History from the Paleolithic to the Present
This course explores the changing relationships between human beings and the natural world from early history to the present. We will consider the various ways humans across the globe have interacted with and modified the natural world by using fire, domesticating plants and animals, extracting minerals and energy, designing petro-chemicals, splitting atoms and leaving behind wastes of all sorts. Together we consider the impacts, ranging from population expansion to species extinctions and climate change. We examine how human interactions with the natural world relate to broader cultural processes such as religion, colonialism and capitalism, and why it is important to understand the past, even the deep past, in order to rise to the challenges of the present.
Global Environmental Issues
Wildfires, deforestation, air pollution, plastics in the ocean, lead in water, and increasingly destructive natural disasters have all been in the news lately. What are the underlying causes? What can be done? In this course students will examine eight environmental issues. They will become familiar with the current knowledge, debates, human impacts, economic consequences, policies, and potential solutions for each issue. Lectures will introduce each of the disciplines that contribute to the dialogue on these environmental issues, while a final project will allow students to dive deeper into one major environmental issue within the context of each of these disciplines. In addition to lectures, readings, and discussion there is a semester-long group project culminating in a final paper.
Global Supply Chain Decarbonization
After four generations of explosive global trade growth, a growing awareness of climate change and other environmental externalities has triggered a global movement toward decarbonization, localization and re-shoring. ESG pressure from investors as well as carbon-related taxes, incentives and reporting requirements are driving operations and supply management to go green. However, lowering the carbon profile of global supply chains is a massive undertaking. This class teaches a proven sequence of management decision-making frameworks and optimization tools for eliminating carbon throughout the supply chain. Students will apply logistical and supply management models that integrate carbon objectives with cost, service level, and other conventional supply chain management objectives, making the course valuable for supply chain professionals and students alike. The combination of academic constructs and real-life case studies is designed to equip students to successfully lead their companies’ decarbonization programs. It also prepares students to take the optional REVchain™ supply chain decarbonization certificate exam.
Heat and Mass Transfer
This course covers fundamentals of heat and mass transfer and applications to practical problems in energy conversion and conservation. Emphasis will be on developing a physical and analytical understanding of conductive, convective, and radiative heat transfer, as well as design of heat exchangers and heat transfer with phase change. Topics covered will include: types of heat transfer processes, their relative importance, and the interactions between them, solutions of steady state and transient state conduction, emission and absorption of radiation by real surfaces and radiative transfer between surfaces, heat transfer by forced and natural convection owing to flow around bodies and through ducts, analytical solutions for some sample cases and applications of correlations for engineering problems. Students will develop an ability to apply governing principles and physical intuition to solve problems.
History and Theory of Architecture and Climate
This seminar will explore the history of buildings as mechanisms of climate management, and the theoretical and conceptual frameworks that pertain. In particular, we will examine how visual and mediatic interventions became a crucial aspect of architectural engagement with climate systems, and how, simultaneously, architectural image-making techniques became an important interdisciplinary site for understanding the cultural effects of scientific knowledge.
Humans and the Earth System: How it Works, How We Got Here, and How to Save Our Planet
As our planet's climate changes, it is imperative to understand the basic structures of the earth system and our connections to these, past, present, and future. The goal of this course is to help students develop an integrated understanding of climate change, linking the fundamental science - from the microscopic to the global scale - to human actions and possible futures. This course brings together approaches from environmental science, social sciences, history, and policy. Beyond providing basic climate and environmental literacy, we will also explore current and projected impacts of change, including changes to human life and biodiversity as well as other physical and biological systems. The course is divided into three units: 1. Science: what are the chemical and physical drivers of our changing climate, and what are the biological, health and environmental implications so far. 2. Impacts: how human activity has affected environments and climate so far and how climate change is currently impacting society, nature, agriculture, health, cities, and the most vulnerable communities. 3. Solutions: the roles of policy, business, agriculture, planning, and personal choices. The course is open to undergraduate students of all disciplines. While the reading and weekly assignments will be specific to the module, students may define a capstone project that reflects their academic interests.
Hydrology
Introduction to the basic principles of the hydrologic cycle and water budgets, precipitation and infiltration, evaporation and transpiration, stream flow, hydrograph analysis (floods), subsurface and groundwater flow, well hydraulics, water quality, and frequency analysis.
Ideas in Energy Policy
This seminar will explore a collection of ideas influencing energy policy development in the U.S. and around the world. Our platform for this exploration will be seven recent books to be discussed during the semester. These books each contribute important insights to seven ideas that influence energy policy: Narrative, Transition, Measurement, Systems, Subsidiarity, Disruption, Attachmen
Integrated Planning for Sustainable Infrastructure and Environmental Impact
This course introduces the foundational principles and methodologies of comprehensive planning across key domains, including transportation systems, school facilities, environmental sustainability, Title VI compliance, and land development. Designed for students in Environmental Studies, the course provides both theoretical knowledge and practical skills to address complex planning challenges. Students will explore how these disciplines intersect to create cohesive, sustainable, and equitable communities, preparing them to lead projects that integrate environmental, social, and infrastructure considerations. Through case studies, hands-on projects, and strategic planning exercises, students will gain the tools necessary to contribute to urban planning, sustainability initiatives, and infrastructure development.